Killers and War Heroes
by Serpensortia Sweetie
Summary: War has devastated the world and Ginny Weasley has hit rock bottom. A meeting is arranged in a graveyard to reunite Ginny with the only thing that kept her alive during the war.
1. Chapter 1

**Killers and War Heroes**

**Chapter 1**

_**The Empty**_

The moonlight reflected on her pale skin making her ghostly as her dress robes waved behind her in the breeze. The midnight frost on the grass stung against her bare ankles as she walked determinedly down the hill. She was all alone, and for once she was glad that she was. Her feelings about that night alternated. Part of her regretted sending that owl, and the other part knew this was what she needed.

Nothing had felt right in her life lately. The war shook the world of wizards and muggles alike, and once it was over the world seemed tired. Everyone was free to live without fear, but the problem was that nobody could. Between the mourning for the lost, the scars for injuries and scars for the things they have witnessed, most people walked as empty shells. Twenty one-year-old Ginny Weasley, even a year after the war ended, counted herself among the empty.

Ginny braced herself as she found herself in front of the black wrought iron gates of the cemetery. She pushed the gate open and cringed as the rusty hinges creaked loudly in the silence. The bottom of her skirt caught and tore on the bottom on one of the spikes on the gate and she cursed under her breath. Then she thought of something spitefully, "Doesn't matter, Harry hated it anyway."

_Ginny had married Harry when she was seventeen. Ginny's parents didn't exactly approve, but Ginny convinced her parents with a tragic tale. She talked of their true love for each other, and how if they didn't live in such dark times they would wait until they were older. She cried when she told them that they might go to war and never be able to return to each other's arms. They eventually gave their consent and after a few months of engagement they were happily married. During their engagement, Harry begged her not to go to war and to stay home and help some other way. He wanted her to be a healer or something off the battlefields. She wouldn't hear a word of it and wouldn't be happy unless she was fighting alongside him and her friends. _

_One of her biggest regrets was being so bent on going to battle with them. Not long after their marriage, Harry got comfortable with the idea of her fighting, and she immediately became a soldier to him. She was no longer his delicate wife, but one among the ranks that he would command. Whenever she tried to act like a wife to him he would look at her with disbelief and she immediately felt ashamed for trying to take his mind off the war. It didn't take long for Ginny to grow tired of his new behavior and before long their marriage was in as much danger as they were._

She was so anxious that the sound of her own foot cracking a stick in half was enough to pull her out of her own thoughts. She didn't know if it was guilt or excitement that was making her feel the way she did. She didn't even know if he would show. He hadn't been seen anywhere since the war had ended. All supporters of the Dark Lord had changed their identities and physical appearances and she assumed that he was no different. He was probably living a new, but equally broken life, with everything he had ever known stripped away, just like her own. Still, she remembered every detail of him from that day that so often consumed her thoughts.

_It was about four years ago, only months after Ginny and Harry were married and days before they were called to war. Ginny was only seventeen and knew she was too young to be married and too young to fight for the war. She felt like her life was moving too quickly and her body was just being dragged along for the ride. _

_It was one of the un-safest times to be alone, but she had to get out of Headquarters. Everyone was fighting and screaming at each other, arguing strategies and alliances. She had developed a very bad attitude about the whole war, sick of all of the tension and responsibility forced on her. That day she had fought with Harry, as she so often did those days. This time she was so angry she had been driven to say, "Maybe this was a mistake." When she said it they just walked in separate directions. He walked back to his strategies, and she walked out the front door._

_She walked out onto the street and walked for about an hour until she was completely out of any recognizable area. She was surrounded by towering trees and falling darkness, and she didn't care one bit. It was then that she spotted him walking towards her on the other side of the streets. His figure and his platinum blonde hair were unmistakable. He was the one everyone was looking for, and the one she never expected to find. He pulled out his wand and pointed it in her direction, making her gasp fearing for her life. _

_She felt relieved when he just shined light from his wand tip in her direction. "What are you doing out here, Weasley?" he asked after a moment of squinting. _

"_I should ask you that, Malfoy," she spit her words at him angrily. She pulled out her wand to protect herself. "I could get you locked away so fast…"_

_He cut off her threat, "Go run and tell your brother's, Little Weasley," Draco said with a bored drawl._

"_No, that's what you want me to do. You want to use me to lure them here." She accused him with her wand pointed at him as he walked closer. _

"_If that's what I wanted, I would have told you to go get your husband," Draco said pointedly._

_Ginny's expression changed instantly, and Draco watched as her face paled at the mention of her husband. She looked down and put her wand back into her robes. It wasn't the reaction he expected. Her usual spitfire attitude had recoiled and she suddenly seemed vulnerable. _

"_You shouldn't be out here walking by yourself," he said in a slightly protective tone. _

"_Why do you care?" Ginny looked him straight in the eye._

_He sent her stare right back and all of a sudden something in his eyes changed. "I guess everyone has to be running from something right?" Draco said sadly, more so to himself than to Ginny. _

"_I'm nothing like you, Malfoy," Ginny growled slightly._

_She watched his expression when she said this. She watched the muscles in his jaw tense up and then relax again, closing his eyes as he did so. "I guess not," he said softly. Then he looked up into her eyes, as if he were looking for something, "There was always something different about you, kid." _

_Ginny didn't know what had gotten into her, but she took a step closer to him. She was so confused. Everything she had ever known about him would have made her run for her life. However, there she was, standing inches away from him and all fear had abandoned her. It was so cold she could see his breath, misty in the air right before her. They just stood there looking into each other's eyes for a moment. There was something entrancing about his bright gray eyes._

_Ginny had that feeling again, as if he were looking for something deep in her eyes. Maybe if he looked long enough he would realize why she was running in the first place. _

"_You should get back to wherever you came from, Ginny," Draco said quietly, startling her out of her trance. He called her Ginny. _

"_I'll be fine, Draco," She choked out the last word with some difficulty._

"_No, you may not be so lucky about the next person you cross paths with."_

_He began to roll up his sleeves and Ginny looked at him curiously. She then understood once he bared both of his forearms to her, pale and unscathed, in the moonlight. Slowly and without thinking, she reached out and ran her fingertips gently from the light blue veins of his wrist, all the way to where she always assumed his dark mark had been placed. There was no mark to be found. She looked up into his eyes as she let her hand drop back to her side._

"_We may be more alike than you thought."_

_Ginny had nothing to say, but she could feel all the tears of the night start to immediately race to her eyes._

_He gave her a sympathetic look, and raised his hand to her cheek. One of her tears slid down and landed on her lips, and Draco brushed it away gingerly with his thumb. He smiled at her slightly and said, "You'll be ok." He took his hand down and began to back away. "Take care of yourself, will you?" _

_Ginny nodded and tried to smile with little success as he turned and continued walking on his path to wherever. Ginny watched, crying the whole time, until she could no longer see his figure retreating in the darkness. She decided to turn around and walk back home, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth. She kept replaying everything that had just happened over in her head just as she would for the next few years. It was all she could think of, especially when she had walked back into headquarters and nobody had even noticed that she'd gone. _

She never told anyone that she ever saw him, or that she even left that night. Ginny knew he was evil. She knew he was a Deatheater, but that's didn't stop her from thinking about what he had said, and how he made her feel when he touched her face. When he showed her his arm and brushed away her tears she felt like he was trying to tell her that you can't always divide things by good or evil. Some things go deeper than that. She felt like he too understood that sometimes things are more important than battle strategies. That was something that Harry could never understand, and she couldn't blame him, which is why she felt so horrible for resenting him for it.

The wife of a War Hero should be proud of her husband. Proud to attend ministry events, and to be on his arm at every public appearance and parade. The problem was that every event sugarcoated and glorified the victory of that war for the public, just as Ginny and Harry glorified their happy marriage at every reception and ceremony. The war was brutal and most that made it out alive had died in some way or another. By the end of the war, all that victory meant to her was that she could finally rest. After the war Harry and Ginny tried their best to return to their old selves. It was too late and the hope of rebuilding their relationship after the damage done was long gone. Neither of them were who they used to be, and eventually they accepted it.

That was why she sent that letter. That's why she walked on that dark and frigid night in a cemetery to be reunited with Draco Malfoy, the Deatheater who helped her make it though the war.

* * *

**Hello Readers! So I published these first two chapters of this story in fall 2006, and many many years later I am back to finish it. I am notorious for doing this. If any of my old readers are still out there, welcome back! And to my new ones, I would love to know what you think. Review 3 And Thanks to my forever BETA and Best Friend Courtney. xoxo**


	2. Cheers

**Killers and War Heroes**

**Chapter 2**

_**Cheers**_

Ginny searched for him through the darkness as she walked between two long rows of tombstones. She reached down to run her hand over the ice-cold marble. She realized that they didn't specify a place to meet, and the more she thought about how the night could go, the more confused she got.

She seriously contemplated turning around until she spotted him walking towards her in the distance. As he walked under a clearing in the trees, the moonlight reflected down on him and she stopped dead in her tracks. Though she had only assumed he would have altered his physical appearance as the other Deatheaters had, he looked just like he did the last time she saw him.

_The war was drawing close to its end, and though the order and its army were winning, the losses were really taking a toll on their morale. The war had gotten so serious that the ministry could no longer conceal their existence from the muggle world. Things had to be explained to the muggles, especially those in the army and police force, to insure the protection of the lives of civilians. Many of them even enlisted to join the fight, armed with guns, bombs, shields and swords. Deatheaters weren't threatened by the amount of muggles that had joined the ranks. They took delight in attacking them, they were just muggles, after all. _

_That particular day had been a brutal and bloody fight. Their army had stormed one of the Dark Side's main fortresses, hoping Voldemort would be there. By the end of the battle they'd concluded that even though Voldemort was not found, the battle was one of the most important in the war. They had cut down the enemy's numbers significantly during the battle, including two of their army's commanders. The castle was virtually empty of all living Deatheaters. They had all either been killed or had escaped at last minute. _

_The order had been assigned on one last mission for the day. They were to split up and search the halls for any of their surviving soldiers that may have been stranded or wounded from battle. They were told to be on their guard when they were walking alone, incase they encountered any enemies that may have been still alive and hiding. They were instructed to kill them at once if they were attacked or approached in any way. _

"_If anyone had told me when I was a little girl that some day I would become a killing machine, I probably would have cried," Ginny said flatly as she looked down at the dead body of the Deatheater that had tried to attack her. She felt depression sink in as it always did when she killed, and she continued on her mission and walked away from the body. _

_In searching for survivors, she was forced to look down at all the bodies on the ground. She didn't even see one survivor. The blood from all of the wounds was spilt all over the marble floor in thick pools. She was nearing the end of the hall and she found herself wondering morbidly which was worse; Bullets or the killing curse? At least with the killing curse there was less pain and a shorter wait for death. In the middle of these thoughts she saw a masked black cloak move in the distance and she braced herself for another fight. She drew her wand and slowly began walking forward. The figure was kneeling on the ground and hadn't spotted her yet._

_Once she came close enough his head snapped up to look at her at the sound of her footsteps. He looked directly up at her for a second and then just looked back down again. She lifted her wand and pointed it at him ready to shout a spell at any sight of threat. She wondered what he was playing at, ignoring her like that. She didn't understand, and was worried that he had some sort of other plan. _

_Then, she realized what he was actually doing. He was kneeling over one of his fellow Deatheater's bodies and staring down at him. Ginny watched him carefully as he gently lifted his comrade's arms and crossed them over his chest. He was laying him properly to rest. Ginny was intrigued; she had never seen any one of them stay behind to do such a thing. She knew she should run, curse, do anything but stand there and watch, but she was mesmerized. She was actually drawn a step closer in curiosity, though she knew she shouldn't. _

_Next, he reached down and unsnapped the black mask away from the deatheater's face. What she saw made her breath catch in her chest. It was Blaise Zabini. His young handsome face was paled and his eyes were staring blankly at the ceiling. The deatheater reached down again and gently closed Blaise's eyes. He sat there for a second with his head down and Ginny once again took a step closer. _

_He looked up at her and slowly began to stand. She felt fear kick in once again as he started to raise his hands. His hands only went to remove his own mask and Ginny's eyes met Draco's stare. His hair hung down in front of his blank gray eyes, and he had a gash drawn from his eyebrow to the corner of his eye. His blood was dripping down his cheek in a stream, the red making a harsh contrast against his pale skin. _

_Ginny was so shocked to see him that she didn't know what to do or say. Should she say anything at all? She watched his eyes travel down to her side, and she followed his eyes with her own. His eyes stopped on her hand and when she saw the huge cut across her knuckles she was actually startled. She had become so numb to everything that she didn't even notice that blood was constantly dripping from her fingertips and falling in drops next to her feet. It actually scared her that she didn't even notice the pain. _

_They looked up and their eyes met once more. She had that feeling again. It was the same one that she felt when they ran into each other on the street that first night. She felt like he was trying to say so many things with only a stare. She watched him try to force a half smile and all of a sudden his melancholy voice cut through the silence, "Look at us," he said in disbelief, shaking his head slightly. _

_It took all the strength she had to try to smile at him, and she took a step closer to him. She felt him smile a bit more when she stepped closer, and she felt a chill run through her body. She just felt drawn to him. She didn't think it was for affection, but more for any feeling that may be similar to her own. _

_She saw his eyes widen quickly, and before she could even open her mouth to ask why, she heard a yell. "Ginny!" It was Harry, sounding like he was somewhere at the end of the hall. She knew it the second she heard it. Her first instinct was to turn around, but then she realized how bad the situation must have looked. She was standing a foot away from one of the most wanted deatheaters, not to mention Harry's personally worst enemy, and doing absolutely nothing about it._

_Ginny had to make a choice. "Run," she mouthed silently, her eyes beginning to tear. _

_Draco didn't move. _

"_Run," she said very softly, and her voice cracked. _

_He could hear the desperation in her voice and it killed him. He looked into her eyes for what felt like forever, uninterrupted by Harry's repeated screams of "Ginny!" He didn't want to turn and leave, but her eyes pleaded with him to save himself. He broke their gaze, turned away, and disapparated just as Harry charged at them. The whole time, Ginny couldn't even flinch. _

"_Ginny! What were you thinking! Standing here like that! He could have killed you! Why didn't you kill him, run, anything?" Harry shouted at her back, panting from running. He was confused, angry, and scared. "Ginny!" he shouted again, and when he got no response again, he grabbed her shoulder roughly and spun her to face him. Her face was ghostly pale when her eyes came to meet his for a second. "Ginny?" he said again, his voice sounding concerned, which was the last thing she heard as she fainted into his arms._

Harry asked her what had happened that night only once. She told him she had no idea what happened, but that Malfoy didn't curse her or harm her in any way. He never asked again, but she could tell that it bothered Harry all the time. He couldn't understand why she let him get away, or why she had passed out. She would never be able to tell him either.

Ginny had finally snapped out of it and realized that he was practically right in front of her now. He was wearing a black unbuttoned pea-coat, and had his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. He stopped in front of her and said, "Hey" seeming slightly awkward.

"Hi," she replied shyly as well. "It's um… good to see you." They were looking at each other but they weren't looking into each other's eyes.

Draco was shocked when he received her letter and he wasn't quite sure how to react to seeing her. "Good to see you again…" Draco said softly, slightly awed by her looks. She was no longer a girl who he had the strange inclination to want to protect. She was much thinner, which may not have been for good reasons. Her red curls were tied up neatly atop her head, save a few stray ones that had fallen to frame her face. She was wearing a simple black dress that tightly hugged her curvy features. As he stared at her he noticed that she was shivering, and then realized that her shoulders were completely bare. Without even asking her if she wanted it, Draco took off his coat and held it out to her. "Take it."

Ginny smiled and took the coat from him.

"Did you walk all the way here like that?" he asked her curiously.

Ginny nodded.

"What are you thinking, walking around in the winter like that?"

"I just needed a walk," Ginny said, with an odd sadness in her voice. She looked down and fidgeted with her hands a bit. Draco looked at her, tilting his head slightly trying to read her. He shrugged it off and told her to put the coat on.

As she swung the coat around her shoulders she felt something heavy collide with the side of her leg. She ignored it for the time being, as they decided to walk and find someplace to sit.

They walked silently for a while, but it didn't seem awkward at all. However, while they were walking Ginny discretely slipped her hand into the coat pocket and felt what was unmistakably a flask. Ginny smirked to herself and pulled it out of the pocket. She held it up, sloshing its contents around so Draco would notice. When he looked up at her she had an eyebrow raised at him in question, though her face held a satisfied smirk.

"I was nervous," he said defensively, snatching the flask of firewhisky out of her hand.

She giggled slightly, and she saw him trying not to smile at her. "Well? Aren't you going to offer me any?" she placed her hands on her hips.

He turned and looked at her, shocked. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me," she said haughtily. "You come here with alcohol all hidden away in your pocket and don't share, even after I caught you with it?"

"No, it's just that I didn't think that a classy girl like you would ever be caught drinking in a graveyard at night with the likes of me," he said handing her back the now uncapped flask.

She took a long swig, feeling it burn all the way down her throat and into her stomach. She wrinkled her nose trying to recover from its strong taste, her voice was slightly hoarse from her first sip of whiskey, "Well, I asked you here didn't I?"

"You have a point," he said taking the flask back from her. A smirk played across his face as he raised it to his lips. "Cheers…"


	3. Scars

**Killers and War Heroes**

**Chapter 3**

_**Scars**_

"Why do I get the feeling this flask is refilling itself?" Ginny asked jokingly, after another swig. Draco didn't feel the need to explain that the undetectable extension charm he put on it allowed him to fit an entire handle of fire whiskey into an average sized flask.

They had settled down on the steps of a grand mausoleum, magically melting away the snow before sitting down across from each other. Neither were sure how much time had passed, but they could both feel the buzz from the whiskey settling in. Trying their best to strike up trivial conversation, they passed the flask back and forth until the alcohol lost its burn and the cold lost its sting.

Draco noticed that Ginny had started to take two gulps each time before handing it back to him. "You are a better drinker than I thought, Weasley," he confessed, not sure if he was impressed or concerned.

"Yea, well," She replied shortly, not offering any more.

Apparently she thought that counted as a valid response. Draco raised an eyebrow at her half-hearted comeback.

"One shouldn't be so quick to make assumptions. Surely you have learned that about us?"

"Us," Draco muttered softly in disbelief. He had never heard of them referred to as an 'us' before. He took a swig while trying out the word again in his head.

Not for the first time that night, an uncomfortable silence fell between them. The difference now was that they were under the influence, and silence went from painfully awkward to electrically charged.

Ginny stared at Draco, studying every inch of his face in the moonlight. She had never had the reason or freedom to do this in the past. He stared back at her, taking in the curiosity that brought the youth back into her eyes. He watched their breath swirl together like silver smoke in the frigid night, dancing in the small space between them.

As she took in all of his pale features, his cheekbones, his lips, she stopped searching when she noticed a slightly raised scar next to his left eye. It was a physical memory of the wound he'd gotten the last time she saw him in battle. She recalled standing before him amidst the death and destruction and feeling all of her walls come down. Not knowing what came over her, she reached up and softly traced the scar from his eyebrow past the corner of his eye. Ginny let her hand rest on his cheek for a moment, watching him close his eyes at her touch.

Draco reached up and took her hand down from his face, breathing deeply. The wind felt colder once her hand had been removed.

Ginny's mind raced. She had surely made a mistake. He did not want her to touch him, and she should have never written that letter in the first place. But before her mind could get any further, he turned her hand over between them revealing the scar that interrupted the smooth porcelain skin of Ginny's hand. He traced it right back.

She watched in awe as Draco's long fingers swept over the back of her hand. More had been said in that one minute of silence than in the hour of banter leading up to it. She laughed quietly to herself.

"The fact that you remembered that…"

"How is it any different than you remembering?" Draco cut her off. A new blush crept into her cheeks, this time unrelated to the whiskey. It was at that moment that Ginny knew their meeting had crossed the line from innocent to complicated. No topic would be safe or easy any longer.

While feeling nostalgic of their brief encounters, she recalled one more detail. With her free hand, she pushed up the sleeve of the arm she had once thought his Dark Mark had been. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw that Draco's arm was no longer perfect and unscathed. From the crease of his elbow to his wrist, the skin was puckered and scarred. The tremendous scar shone brightly in the night, as Draco watched Ginny stare in shock and confusion. With a bit of wandless magic he cast a spell that hid the scar from the naked eye, making it disappear before her.

"That first night I saw you on the street…"

"This is how I hid it from you."

"I don't want you to hide anything from me," Ginny pleaded, resting a gentle hand on his arm. He lifted the spell and his arm returned to its gnarled state. "Scar or no scar, there is still no Dark Mark. Isn't that what you meant to show me that night?"

"The first time I showed you, it had just been removed. It was not even a scar yet, but a fresh wound. The dark magic used on it was so powerful that it took almost a year to completely heal."

She could see the memory flicker alive like a movie screen in his gray eyes. "Why did it happen?" she asked.

"I had already been given the Dark Mark when I was assigned to kill Dumbledore. My father was so proud that I had been chosen; no one ever considered what would happen if I failed. Or should I say, when I failed. I knew I would. I had no desire to kill Dumbledore. I was always a mean kid, the worst kind of rude git, with no shame…"

"I know," Ginny interrupted, matter-of-factly.

"Do you want to hear this or not?" he snapped at her. She pressed her lips together guiltily. "I know I was always a jerk, and I can't say I'm even the most pleasant now… But I'm not evil. I got swept into the Deatheaters under everyone's assumptions that I was exactly like my father. So when I failed the mission, part of my punishment was that my Mark was removed. I can't even begin to describe the pain… I wish I was able to tell you that I bravely took it like a man," Draco looked down and shook his head. "It is considered shameful to have your Mark removed. My family was mortified, but that was the least of their problems. For me, having that stupid skull removed made me feel free. Not true of course; I was far from being free." He paused for a moment to drink from the flask. Ginny had forgotten about it, she had been so engrossed in Draco's morose tale. He passed it back to her without meeting her eyes before continuing. "I wasn't good enough for them, which made me think that it was a bit of good inside me that set me apart from them. But even without being branded I was too deeply involved. I knew too much for them to let me leave and I was too weak willed to try. It was cowardly but I never knew anything else. I moved among the ranks like a ghost." He raised his eyes to hers, "I could see the same in you."

Ginny's breath caught in her chest.

"You had fire way back when, Weasley." Draco smirked at her, "I used to like to fuel it. But when I saw it was going out, it made me feel helpless. I wanted to fix you, even if I couldn't fix myself."

"I may be a fighter, but I wasn't built for war. I started to fade. I lost who I was in who Harry needed me to be," Ginny said sadly. Somewhere up in the towering trees above them an owl hooted, breaking the melancholy silence.

"The time we met on the street, the war hadn't begun yet, but you were unhappy even then. I bet you never admitted it to anyone. The fact that you do now means you are one step closer to doing something about it," he said earnestly.

Ginny looked Draco straight in the eye, "Sending you that letter _was_ my first step toward doing something about it."

She had said exactly what he had wanted to hear. He hadn't planned for it. It made his head spin and he wasn't even quite sure when he started falling so hard. He said the first thing that came to his mind before he could stop himself, "Do you love him?"

Ginny's lips parted for a moment, not knowing what to say. What she should say and what she wanted to say were vastly different. It seemed an eternity before she began, "I care about him, and I believe he is a good man. He is brave and has done so much for our world. But no. We fell out of love a long time ago…" Ginny sighed. "Admitting this out loud for the first time feels unreal, and to you, of all people." She studied his face and she was sure she saw the corner of his mouth twitch, momentarily wanting to smirk but knowing this was difficult for her to say. It sparked a brief anger in her. "Does this still please you after all this time? Hearing about Harry failing?" she said with that old familiar bite to her voice.

Draco never meant to bring about hostility in her, but he had to admit, it showed him that fire he had been missing. She presented with the perfect opportunity to him to reply smoothly, "Only when it comes to you."

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**I hope you are enjoying the story so far, I promise it won't be another five years before I post the next chapter. I'm on a roll. Please review! xox**


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